Portering campaigners stay up all night as protest reaches new heights

Chris Venables campaigning in Vanbrugh

YUSU’s ‘Save Our Porters’ campaign provided a noticeable campus presence on Wednesday night as campaigners set up stalls in Derwent, Langwith and Vanbrugh. This event follows Monday night’s furniture-based demonstration of a similar vein in Derwent Bar by some unidentified students.

Starting at 7.30pm, students signed and wrote petitions and protest notes respectively, in order to draw attention to the need for 24 hour porter services.

Chris Venables, who is championing the campaign, told the Yorker, “We’re here to raise awareness and see what happens at the Porters’ lodges while they’re not manned. Of course, we will have to see if the new system works as the University claims that it does, but I’m very sceptical.”

A common theme of complaint about the University’s compromise of extra campus security guards was the impersonal nature of it all. Many students explained that the porters do not just exist to open locked doors and respond to emergency situations, but their mere presence is important in itself. Venables stated, “Security are not in touch with the students, they are unknowns that respond from all over campus to their radios. While porters can deter troublemakers and provide the comfort of knowing that help is at hand, the security men are elusive. As students, we don’t see them, and we don’t know them.”

Nansi Taha, a first year management student, explained that, “The porters, they know your face, and you know that you can go to them for help. And that’s important.”

The events of Wednesday night was accompanied by the YUSU UGM, at which Christopher Etheridge proposed that the Union oppose the new portering hours, stating that, “Aside from the more obvious comforts of security, students will go to the porters for first aid. In case of life threatening conditions, closing porters’ lodges will only mean that valuable diagnosis time is lost.”

There is a great deal of anger among the campaigners who claim that despite increased rent and tuition fees, University services are being eliminated or down-sizing.

One campus porter, who wishes to remain anonymous, told the Yorker that, “We are very much in favour of the students’ efforts. Students will suffer from the University’s decision, and it’s not really just for our sake that we oppose it, but it’s for theirs as well.”

There is speculation that the University was fully aware it would be an unpopular decision. The same porter explained that they were informed of the decision to cut back on services at the end of June.

One ‘Save Our Porters’ campaigner told the Yorker that “To announce such a decision in the middle of the end-of-year chaos as students go back home, indicates a realisation among the University administration that they are doing the wrong thing.”

While the peaceful protests and democratic voices spoke across campus, more subversive tactics were being employed last night, all designed to demonstrate the necessity of porters’ presence. This follows Monday night’s event at which a sign was left that stated ‘Wouldn’t have happened with 24 hour portering…”

One anonymous senior YUSU council member told the Yorker that, “Of course we cannot comment on the exploits of students acting independently of our campaign’s methods, but as I think it was said at the last YUSU meeting, ‘We can endorse the sentiment, but not the tactics’.”

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